Tastes of Triumph

1968: Second Half

The interval between the manned flights of Gemini and Apollo was less
than two years (November 1966 to October 1968), about the same as that
between Mercury and Gemini (May 1963 to March 1965). But before Apollo
flew, the days were filled with more trauma, troubleshooting, and toil.
Asked by a former college classmate to give an address, Houston Apollo
manager George Low replied that he could not - he was already spending
so much time with Apollo that his own family hardly saw him. That was
only a slight exaggeration. For more than a year, his staff meetings had
been crammed full of items that needed his personal attention. Every
Friday without fail there were spacecraft configuration control
meetings, leaving only Saturdays to visit the Downey and Bethpage plants
to check on progress.

Shortly after midyear 1968, the feeling of dashing from one problem to
another started to fade. George Mueller, manned space flight chief in
Washington, was told at a monthly management council meeting that North
American's command module 103 was moving through checkout operations at
such an excellent pace that it would almost certainly be able to make a
manned Saturn V mission before the end of the year.1

Now that such a flight seemed probable in 1968, there was sobriety, as
well as elation, among Apollo workers. Apollo 7, they knew, would be the
last of the Saturn IB missions in mainline Apollo. Saturn IB vehicles
206 through 212 were released to a follow-on Apollo Applications
Program, although that project was faring none too well in Congress for
fiscal 1969 money. Thus, ironically, even before the first astronauts
lifted off the ground in Apollo, a problem in worker morale began to
surface.* Low commented:

There has been increasing concern by the people in [the Apollo
Spacecraft Program Office], as well as others at the center, about what
we will do after we land on the moon. In light of recent budget
decisions, many of our people are concerned about the future of [the
Manned Spacecraft Center].2

But the members of the Apollo team who were working on the lunar module
had little time to think about the future. Mueller and his deputy,
Samuel Phillips, told Grumman officials in July that the launch vehicle
and the command module were in good shape but too many changes were
still being made in the lunar module. Unless Grumman speeded up its work
considerably, it was going to be far-behind everyone else.3

When LM-3, listed as the first to be manned, reached the Cape on 14
June, the receiving inspectors found more than 100 deficiencies. Many
were major. After more than a month of inspecting, checking, and
testing, George C. White, reliability and quality assurance chief at
NASA Headquarters, reported 19 areas - including stress corrosion,
window failures, and wire and splice problems - that Mueller's
Certification Review Board would have to consider. Charles Mathews,
former Gemini manager in Houston and now working for Mueller in
Washington, made a quick trip to Florida. In Mathews' opinion, the work
that Rocco Petrone's launch operations team at Kennedy Space Center
would have to do was far beyond what should have been required.4 This lack of a flight-ready lunar module forced
Apollo planners to try for some short cuts on the route to the moon.

* Morale problems among agency
workers arose at different points in the Mercury and Gemini programs.
Mercury ended abruptly in June 1963 (after six manned flights). Most of
the personnel simply moved on into Gemini or Apollo positions. Gemini
suffered its morale drop after eight of its ten manned flights, and the
scramble for new jobs in mid-1966 was more frantic than it had been
three years earlier. The problems of hiring and firing in industry for
short-term programs such as space and weapon system projects have never
really been resolved. And the same is essentially true for federal
agencies.